Where did the concept of innate rights come from?
rights a person or animal has without having to earn or be given then (perhaps with the exception of rights given by a divine being, which are in practice usually innate)

Well, what do you exactly mean by, "Rights,"? Because if you refer to some sort of god-given facet of existence to which all are entitled to and that none are allowed to interfere with, then I'm sorry but nature's kinda proven that there's no vector of attack it's unwilling to exploit.

It's a bunch of bogus. The Earth is not hollow and for a million years it likely will never be. You can always say technically as in: technically most matter is contained in the nucleus therefore Earth is hollow but even that is contested by Observations of Physical phenomena. The Earth has been traveled around from one end to the other in the 1500s. Technically again, since the Earth is spewing through a cosmic vacuum at speeds faster than when in combination, light, it could be described, from a *fixed point* as flat. But it is not flat. And thank Allah (<---- joke) never will be.

The question of what awaits us after death, just as meaningless as the question of what awaits a harlequin after a bal masque. There is nothing awaits him, because there is only a harlequin mask. It seems to me that it's right to say that there is something awaits us in life. And death is the awakening of life. But it's not us who awakes, because we are - exactly the same illusion as everything that surrounds us. Dying, we awake from what we took for ourselves. By the way, in the diary of Leo Tolstoy he described a fabulous dream on this subject.

The notion that to lie in and of itself is unjust or immoral is a fallacy.

One may lie for many a purpose. One may lie to entertain, to protect the innocent, or to let the past be forgotten. A lie may be used justly or unjustly. The mechanism itself cannot be held accountable to its use, or the consequences.

>>12603I could be; mostly I think I am just dishonest. Dishonesty is a survival skill for the inept and incompetent, which I am as well. I have reason to expect that any given challenge will be too hard for me to surpass, and I fail constantly. No amount of hard work has ever had an effect; only dishonesty allows my life to go forward.

>>12610I'm not sure that denotology is a thing, but essentially this is the discussion happening here.

Dichotomies such as just versus unjust or moral versus immoral do not exist in real life. Dichotomous concepts operate at once. For instance, Truth can be a lie if enough people accept it. Truth and lies are happening at the same time since we never know the full truth and our perception usually gets in the way of how we see.

We're blind men stumbling through a forest who called going five footsteps progress and the height of all mankind.

>>12603>fear and weakness can convince us otherwise
Some truths are inherently terrifying, in that they represent things we are all weak against. ie. We will all one day die. Is it unreasonable to tell an elderly person they could have many years left? Truths can cause harm if they become a source of depression. Which is more sacred: the preservation of happiness and health, or the truth?

>>12619This is a good point. I think it also illustrates another reason why we could never fully erradicate lies from human society. It is very difficult for us to establish truth, and very easy to lie. Indeed, we lie unintentionally as much as we attempt to tell the truth even at our moral best. We even lie to ourselves, and willfully believe those lies, to avoid truths we are uncomfortable with. If we can hardly distinguish truths from lies, how are we to distinguish the morality of either?

>>12628This is an intriguing post. A thing may be a truth to one individual and a lie to others. Is it an act of lying to express personal truths others do not share?

I'm not sure how to apply the statistics, considering the many fields of lying that need to be included. Of course there are the obvious lies people tell each other to avoid guilt, protect others from harsh truths, intentionally mislead someone's thouts, etc. but acting in movies is also a kind of lying; comedy relies on many sorts of lies; lies come in many shapes and sizes, even degrees.

Worst place to ask since 99% of you couldn't even think of "letting go".

How do I let go of my ego? Or another way of asking is "how do I stop the desire to prove myself worthy among my peers?". It's totally unnecessary, and sitting at home alone I can comfortably say that it's doable and the mindset actually worth having, but when I leave the door I cannot stop myself from becoming a totally different person. That is, one who feeds off the facial expressions of another person and who constantly seeks their approval, or "good" facial expressions. I genuinely don't care what they think when I'm home alone at the end of the day but I guess I still do if I'm behaving this way.

In asking this I'm hoping to find that 1% who can genuinely relate to me and may have found a solution, or at least philosophical banters that put my mind in solace when I leave the doors. (The answer "just stop caring" isn't as easy as you might think).

>>11996I believe you're having a hard time being alone while among your equals. Which is wierd because you like solitude, but when it comes to be one of them on society it feels plastic. Too easy to make them feel whatever they want to feel about you. Good expressions, bad ones, whatever.

You are far from letting the ego go. You're just a psycho who believes that is part of a 1%. You know your condition and the only place you can be sure you are safe from them is at home.

I just witnessed two kids take more "toys" from the toy box of a restaurant than they should have with sneaky eyes, looking around as they do (after hearing the woman say "you can each take something"). When you hear about a homicide, why do people throw an uproar over the death of a child but couldn't really care about an adult when the level of morality between the two is no different?

The premise is not the severity of this instance of theft, but that which they are willing to do to get what they want.

Any thoughts?

Is it because a child is defenseless and knowing that you'd win a fight with them, you've automatically reigned your dominance over them, winning the "game" with them? So all that remains is affection?

I'm beginning to think the vast entirety of human life is just a game of who is inferior and who is superior. What of those who don't have this sense for life?

>>12634It explains nothing of the reason why people irrationally throw fits over a dead child, who, at some undetermined point, would inevitably lose their assumed innocence even if they would become innocent. The lack of care towards the death of an adult who can actually contribute to feed and nurture a child to the prosperous life he speaks of is what is being addressed here. Both the child and the adult seem to have the same morality and both are equally important. Altho articulate like everyone on this forum, he didn't address the point of the thread. Rather, he targeted someone on an assumption that they are edgy, and then equally makes an edgy argument having a basis as equally invalid as theirs. What amazes me is that there exists even one example of someone who can put together a sentence but still cannot see a logical contradiction in an argument they bring forth.

Let's go back to the main question: Why does the ending of a child's life result in paroxysms of anger and sorrow, but not the ending of an adult's life? In terms of continuing the line of future descendants, the adult and the child are equally dependent on each other. Remember, an adult is needed to raise a child to give it a good life and to carry on the cycle, and a child, just as importantly, is needed to become that person to carry on the cycle. Both the child and the adult are immoral.

The question should be open again, since the posts prior to this are useless.

>>12641I think the question you ask lacks an adequate understanding of human nature. What you're doing is intellectualizing emotions which are modes of functioning that are inherently disassociated with the other modes, namely in this case, thinking (or rationality). When a puppy dies instead of a towser, or a kitten dies in lieu of a fully-grown feline, human nature is predisposed to always feel more pity and sympathy for the former in the two examples I just offered. I don't understand your essential point though. Are you espousing a normative ethic against treating one kind more favorably than others because evolutionarily speaking, they serve the same practical purpose of continuing the species? if you are, then I will just refer you back to Hume's is/ought problem. Any argument you make on the normative side will be an ethical one, a non-objective human argument for why this or that concerning the morality of the treatment of animals (and more specifically, human animals). On this point we can at least agree that ethical arguments will be non-objective, but perhaps not non-rational. Your arguments on this side will perhaps be rational and have some strong reasoning, but they won't be objective, which is what I think you're trying to accomplish by stating that the other side is "irrational" or more emotional.

However, I don't want to be attacking a straw-man so I will assume that you're just trying to offer rationally-based arguments against emotional favoritism, in which case we are stuck dealing with emotions, and how one SHOULD feel or SHOULD NOT feel. It seems like we should institute an emotional balance between the youngling and the adult, this is what you argue. And we should do thus because both serve the same biological purpose, they're just two sides of the same coin. However, while trying to distance yourself from emotions, you actually commit the same problem you're railing against that you claim your opponent is doing: that certain ways of feeling are more justified than others. The crux of the problem is really that you're trying to get away from emotions but not realizing that you're inherently enmeshed in an emotional framework to begin with. In the end, you're arguing with emotions albeit from a purported position of rational objectivity. The reason why this is the case is because you haven't attacked the necessary assumption of emotionality which you will have to do to achieve any kind of philosophical cohesiveness. In fact, you're not actually attacking emotions at all, but attacking the way they are expressed. The reason you're not actually attacking emotions is because you're against certain ways of feeling, but not others. That is to say, there are certain ways of expressing emotions that are better than others. More specifically, the
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this is a loaded question. It really depends on what the social laws that whatever society you happen to live in at the time dictate. After all, no one really cares that it was normal in Sparta to throw babies off a cliff if they may or may not have had some birth defect, but when Hitler does it, then he becomes a huge asshole

I'm sure the introverts of this anonymous board have been observant enough in every day life to notice the rare but intriguing countenance that I have only experienced twice so far up to this point in my life.

A brief rundown of how my day went: A colleague recommended me to visit a naturopath who, instead of prescribing medication on the spot, runs through a series of thorough tests to determine anything that can be remedied naturally without harmful medicines. What drew me towards this more than anything was that for once my problems would have been looked at with care and thought and I would not be in a situation similar to a walk-in clinic where they do a drive-by shooting analysis of your ailment, make a hasty diagnosis which often lead to prescriptions of ineffective antibiotics, shoo you away and reel in their next patient. So I go to this thing and fill out a lengthy questionnaire about myself, my diet, and the rank at which I experience written-down symptoms. I also wrote down the fatigue and tiredness that my colleague visibly noted, my depression, as well as my Clonazepam prescription which was prescribed in the past for my bouts of panic attacks and anxiety. I never use them when I don't need them--only when absolutely necessary. He greets me in the waiting area. Later in the session, I make a comment as he is quietly writing down a summary of all my problems and his course of action that I am skeptical of this clinic, but take the liveliness of a 54-year-old who commented on my ill health to be a testament of the good health that comes from the clinic. Shortly after, he draws my blood from what felt like a missed vein due to the pain of the insertion and the draw, which seemed to be caused from a fit of anger or something. He pressed extremely hard (and looking at where the red dot is and how far off it was from my vein, I wouldn't be surprised to know that he isn't experienced or that it was intentional). I then made the comment that my vein was bleeding profusely, which it was in comparison to the regular bloodwork I had done at walk-ins for any STIs. What followed from this as he opened the door and waited for my exit was the most vacant countenance and eye contact I have ever seen. It was as though his mind was elsewhere like that of a serial killer or that he knew that I knew his lying secret which stirred anger that he couldn't let out. His eyes were peeled on me in a way where I could visibly read his stare; it looked like that of a sexual predator who catches sight of a person of interest. It might not be the case here, but it's a stare no different.

I do not take drugs, alcohol or any stimulants.

Could this be the result of my paranoia or even schizophrenia that I don't know I have? I think not. The countenance, or "vacancy" in his face was one that I had only seen one other time. Has anyone else experienced this stare? What the hell is i
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Have you considered that you may simply be overthinking things? Often we build a narrative in our head to explain events as we perceived them, but this can be a fallacy as its all too easy to get lost within said narrative.

“It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

So what do you guys think about this type of view? Such views have been described in modern times in the book "Better Never To Have Been: The Harm Of Coming Into Existence-By David Benatar

the optimist’s impatience with or condemnation of pessimism often has a smug macho tone to it (although males have no monopoly of it). There is a scorn for the perceived weakness of the pessimist who should instead ‘grin and bear it’. This view is defective for the same reason that macho views about other kinds of suffering are defective. It is an indifference to or inappropriate denial of suffering, whether one’s own or that of others. The injunction to ‘look on the bright side’ should be greeted with a large dose of both scepticism and cynicism. To insist that the bright side is always the right side is to put ideology before the evidence. Every cloud, to change metaphors, may have a silver lining, but it may very often be the cloud rather than the lining on which one should focus if one is to avoid being drenched by self-deception. Cheery optimists have a much less realistic view of themselves than do those who are depressed

Society ought to discourage new art and perhaps ban new fiction. Creating something when there’s an existing object is inefficient. Old books can replace new ones. An excerpt from "Culture is not about Esthetics" the philosophy essay written by Gwern Branwen

What a wonderful world that would be, where people could express themselves but only if they make something completely original. It would be great if they could consider that if they're going to pour their heart and soul into a work, other people might have seen something similar to it before, and therefore makes that work unnecessary! I mean, art is about what everyone else wants, not what the artist themselves wants.

>>12631There's a lot of mediocrity, I don't disagree. Sparks of genius are hard to come by in this day and age. But that's probably always been the case anyway.

But who's going to judge whether a work is completely original and what standards are they going to use? discouraging new art might also unwittingly discourage artistic genius. Taxing mediocrity might not be a bad idea, but it does take away a person's individuality and liberty to create what he wants. The artist isn't responsible to the consumer. If the consumer consumes bad art, he consumes bad art at his own harm and ignorance. Consumers can be more discerning using their inward motivation, the act of doing so isn't the responsibility of the creator.

He has a controversial viewpoint, and he brings up interesting ideas, but it's not practical. With a growing population, it'd be pretty lame if most people were consuming the same old material.

He's too cold and hyper-practical in regards to the benefits that art has to serve for society. And I agree with >>12633 that art isn't about what people want, but what the artists' spirit wants.